Can I get a show of hands? Love it? Hate it? Who can’t imagine doing anything else, even though it would be so great to just lie on the couch sometimes and channel -surf. Last night, I fell asleep thinking about set lists and stage plots. And the input list that I am sure missed somebody. And then the suitcase I needed to dig out because I kept forgetting I was leaving for Louisville tomorrow. For a week, no less, but I had to book the Air B&B and van for that other gig after Louisville, the gig we won’t have time to rehearse for. Which means the new charts I gotta make in iRealPro better be even more accurate – and precision has never really been my thing.
But I’ll get them done right after I answer the ten emails that came in asking for pricing and availability, only one of which may actually go to the contract I will have to create, but they all require respect anyway. And now I understand that I am nothing without social media, but I get crazy looking at screens for too long, – this word “content” that seems so potent and powerful and maddening.
As I am compiling a list of random pictures to post, I remember the lyrics I need for a few of the new songs I am learning, so I google those, print them out on the backs of old set lists for gigs I can’t even remember right now. After I get all my mileage accounted for in Quickbooks, the Mailchimp monkey reminds me I haven’t sent a newsletter in a long time and I have some gigs I better announce soon or no one will come to them – not that I believe anyone really wants to come to my gigs anyway, I am always pleasantly surprised and touched when people are there. Thanks for making the effort, folks.
Underneath all this administration, music still nourishes. If I plan for it, I can still write a song. But there’s not too much spontaneous creation—except onstage with the band. All of the above, like a cosmic funnel, siphons down to that divine moment where the music exists.
And finally, I wake up from the grind, breathe the music — and I exist, too.
Thanks for reading this. Can you relate?
Love, Gwen
Valerie by: Mark Ronson and made famous by Amy Winehouse
